by Brian Lumley
Backed up against the black, wormhole-riddled wall at the perimeter of the cavern, where the supporting scaffolding and stanchions were most firmly seated, three evenly spaced, twin-mounted Katushev cannons had pointed their ugly muzzles almost point-blank at the blinding center, ready at a moment’s notice to discharge hot, sleeting steel at anything which might emerge from the glare. Closer to the center, an electrified fence with a gate had been an additional precaution.
But precautions against what?
The answer to that was simple: against what appeared to be the denizens of hell.
As to what the Perchorsk Projekt had been originally, and how it mutated into what it was now:
When the USA started work on its SDI program, the USSR thought to answer with Perchorsk. If America’s aim was to knock out ninety percent of incoming Russian missiles, then the Reds must discover a way to terminate—or otherwise render ineffective—one hundred percent of missiles having origin in the USA. The answer was to have been a screen of energy (several, in fact) which would enclose the Soviet heartland or large, vital parts of it under an impenetrable umbrella.
A team of top-rank scientists was quickly assembled, and in the depths of the Perchorsk ravine an amazing subterranean complex was blasted and hewn out of the mountain itself. A dam was constructed in the ravine; its turbines would supply sufficient hydroelectric power to drive the complex and supplement the energy of its atomic pile. Working furiously, the Soviet task force completed the Perchorsk Projekt in short order and with nothing to spare in what had been a very tight schedule. Except that perhaps the schedule had been just a little too tight.
And then the device had been tested.
It was tested just once, and went disastrously wrong … mechanical failure … energies which should have fanned out and been dispersed across a great arc of the sky were turned back in their tracks, deflected downwards into the core of the Projekt. Into the pile. And the Perchorsk Projekt ate its own heart!
It ate flesh and blood and bone, plastic and rock and steel, nuclear fuel and the atomic pile itself. For a second—maybe two seconds, three—it was ultimately voracious, so much so that finally it ate itself. And when it was over the shining sphere-Gate hung in thin air where the pile had been, and the laboratories and levels all around had been reduced to so much magmass.
That was what Direktor Luchov had termed those monstrous regions in the vicinity of the central cavity and Gate, “the magmass levels”: made monstrous by what had occurred in them at the time of the blowback, when flesh and rock and whatever else had been gathered together and fused or molded into this or that incredible, unthinkable shape like so much plasticine. Men, reversed so that their innards hung outwards, had become one with the rock walls. And closer to the center, where they had been incinerated by the heat of the blowback, there they’d left their twisted, alien impressions scorched into the blackened rock. Pompeii, in a fashion, is similar to look upon; but there in the ashes and lava, at least the figures are still recognizably human.
After that, it had soon become apparent just what the sphere was: the fact that the failed experiment had blown a hole through the wall of this universe into another, which lay parallel. And the sphere was the doorway, the portal … the Gate. But it was a weird kind of gate; anything going through it couldn’t come back; likewise for anything that came through from the other side, from the parallel world of Sunside and Starside. And the trouble with Starside, of course, was that it was the source of vampirism, the “home” of the Wamphyri.
Things had come through from the other side, which by the grace of God—or by chance, good fortune—had been destroyed before they could carry their lethal taint, the plague of vampirism, into the outside world. But such had been their horror that men just couldn’t face up to them. Hence the Katushevs. Hence the flamethrowers everywhere evident, where in other secret establishments one might expect to find fire extinguishers. Hence the FEAR which had lived and breathed and occasionally held its breath in Perchorsk. The FEAR which lived here even now.
Even now, yes …
It was different, Harry observed, but not that different. For one thing the wooden floorboards of the Saturn’s rings platform had been replaced by these steel plates, radiating outwards from the sphere like giant fish scales. The Katushevs had gone, too, leaving the Gate surrounded at its own height by a system of ominous-looking sprinklers. And higher up the curving wall of the cavern, on platforms of their own, were the great glass carboys which contained the liquid agent for this sprinkler system: many gallons of highly corrosive acid. The steel plates of the rings sloped slightly downwards towards the center, so that any spilled acid would run that way; below the sphere-Gate, central on the magmass floor, a huge glass tank served as a catchment area for the acid when its work was done.
Its “work,” of course, would be to blind, incapacitate, and rapidly reduce to fumes anything that should come through from the other side; for after the last grotesque emergence—of a Wamphyri warrior creature—Viktor Luchov had known that exploding steel or a team of men with conventional flamethrowers just wouldn’t be enough. Not for that sort of thing.
What had been enough was the fail-safe system which was in use at that time, which poured thousands of gallons of explosive fuel into the core and then ignited it. Except it had also reduced the complex to a shell. Since when—
“Why didn’t you get out, then?” Harry inquired, when he’d seen everything he needed to see. “Why didn’t you just quit the place, close it up?”
“Oh, we did—briefly,” Luchov answered, blinking rapidly where he peered at his dream visitor in the glare of the Gate. “We got out, sealed off the tunnels, filled all the horizontal ventilation and service shafts into the ravine with concrete, built a gigantic steel door onto the old entrance like a door on a bank vault. Why, we did as good a job on the Perchorsk Projekt as they’d later do on the reactor at Chernobyl! And then we had people sitting out there in the ravine with their sensors, listening to it … until we realized that we just couldn’t stand the silence!”
Harry knew what he meant. The horror at Chernobyl couldn’t reactivate itself; it wasn’t likely to become sentient. But if sentient minds could plug the holes at Perchorsk, others—however alien—might always unplug them.
“We had to know, to be able to see for ourselves, that all was well down here,” Luchov continued. “At least until we could deal with it on a more permanent basis.”
“Oh?” Harry was keenly interested. “Deal with it permanently? Will you explain?”
And Luchov might have done just that, except Harry had allowed himself to become just a fraction too intense, too real. And suddenly, the Projekt Direktor had known that this was more than any ordinary dream.
Starting awake in his austere, cell-like room, the Russian jerked upright in his bed and saw Harry sitting there, staring at him with eyes like clots of fluorescent blood in the room’s darkness. Then, remembering his dream, and panting his shock where he pressed himself to the bare steel wall, Luchov gasped, “Harry Keogh! It is you! You … you liar!”
Again Harry knew what he meant. But he shook his head. “I told you no lie, Viktor. I haven’t killed men for their blood, I’ve created no vampires, and I wasn’t myself infected that way.”
“That’s as may be,” the other gasped, “but you are a vampire!”
Harry smiled, however terribly. “Look at me,” he said, his voice very soft, almost warm, even reasonable. “I mean, I can hardly deny it, can I?” And he leaned himself a little closer to Luchov.
The Russian was as Harry remembered him; his skin might be a shade more sallow, his eyes more feverish, but basically he was the same man. Small and thin, he was badly scarred and the hair was absent from the left half of his face and yellow-veined skull. But however vulnerable Luchov might seem, Harry knew that in fact he was a survivor. He had survived the awful accident which created the Gate, survived all the Things which subsequently came through it, even survi
ved the final holocaust. Yes, survived everything. So far, anyway.
Luchov blanched under the Necroscope’s scrutiny and panted that much faster. He prayed that the steel wall would absorb him safely within itself, maybe to expel him in the cell next door, away from this … man? For Luchov had faced a vampire before, and even the thought of it was terrifying! Finally, he forced out words. “Why are you here?”
Harry’s gaze was unwavering. He watched the yellow veins pulsing rapidly under the scar-tissue skin of Luchov’s seared skull, and answered, “Oh, you know why well enough, Viktor. I’m here because of what E-Branch told you or caused you to be told: that I’m obliged to abandon this world, and in order to do so must use the Perchorsk Gate. But no big deal. Why, I should have thought you’d all be glad to see the last of me!”
“Oh, we would! We would!” Luchov eagerly agreed, nodding until droplets of sweat flew. “It’s just that … that …”
Harry inclined his head a little on one side and smiled his awful smile again. “Go on.”
But Luchov had already said too much. “If what you say is true,” he babbled, trying to change the subject, “that as yet you’ve … harmed no one … I mean …”
“Are you asking me not to harm you?” Harry deliberately yawned, politely hiding the indelicate gape behind his hand—but not before he’d let the Russian glimpse the length and serrated edges of his teeth, and not without displaying the hand’s talons. “What, for the sake of my reputation? Every esper in Europe and possibly even farther afield baying for my blood, but I have to be a good boy? Fair’s fair, Viktor. Now, why don’t you just tell me what E-Branch told your lot, and what they’ve asked you to do? Oh, yes, and what measure—what permanent solution—there could possibly be to this Frankenstein monster you’ve created here at Perchorsk?”
“But I can’t … daren’t tell you any of those things,” Luchov whined, cringing against the steel wall.
“So despite all you’ve been through, you’re still a true, brainwashed son of Mother Russia, eh?” Harry grimaced and gave a mocking snort.
Luchov shook his head. “No, just a man, a member of the human race.”
“But one who believes everything people tell him, right?”
“What my eyes tell me, certainly.”
The Necroscope’s patience was at an end. He leaned closer still, grabbed Luchov’s wrist in a steel claw, and hissed, “You argue well, Viktor. Perhaps you really should have been one of the Wamphyri!”
And at last the Projekt Direktor could see his worst nightmare taking shape before his eyes, the metamorphosis of a man into a potential plague, and knew that he might all too easily become the next carrier. But he still had a card left to play. “You … you defy every scientific principle,” he babbled. “You come and go in that weird way of yours. But did you think I had forgotten? Did you think I wouldn’t remember and take precautions? Better go now, Harry, before they burst in through that door there and burn you to a crisp!”
“What?” Harry let go of him, jerked himself away from him.
Luchov snatched back the covers of his bed and showed the Necroscope the button attached to the steel frame. The button which he had pressed—how long ago?—and whose tiny red light was flashing even now. And Harry knew that however unwittingly, still he’d been betrayed by his own vampire.
For this was a failure of his dark side. The Thing within him had wanted to be seen, to take ascendancy, to do this thing its own way and frighten the answers out of Luchov. Yes, and then possibly to kill him! If Harry had fought it down, then he might simply have plucked the answers right out of the scientist’s mind. But too late for that now.
Not too late to fight back, however, and drive the hidden Thing to ground, beat it back into subservience. He did so, and Luchov saw that he was just a man again. Sobbing, the Russian said, “I thought … I thought … that you would kill me!”
“Not me,” Harry answered as running footsteps sounded from outside. “Not me—it! And yes, it just might have killed you. But damn you, you trusted me once, Viktor. And did I let you down? All right, so the flesh-and-blood me has changed; but the real me, I’m still the same.”
“But it’s different now, Harry,” Luchov answered, suddenly aware that he’d averted … whatever. “Surely you can see that? I’m not doing anything for myself anymore. Not even for Mother Russia. It’s for the human race—for all of us.”
They were banging on the door now, voices shouting.
“Listen.” Harry’s face was as earnest and as human as the Russian had ever seen it; or it would be, but for those hellish eyes. “By now E-Branch—and your Russian organization, too, if they’re worth their salt—must know I only want out. So—why can’t—they—just—let—me—go?”
Shots sounded from the corridor, ten or more in rapid succession, hammerblows of hot lead that slammed into the lock on the steel-paneled door and shattered its works to scrap metal. “But … are you telling me you don’t know?” Luchov saw only Harry now, only the man. “Are you saying you don’t understand?”
“Maybe I do,” Harry answered, “I’m not sure. But right now you’re the only one who can confirm it.”
And so Luchov confirmed it. “But they’re not worried about you going, Harry,” he said as the door was slammed back on its hinges and light flooded in. “They’re only worried that one day you might come back, and about what you might try to bring with you!”
Scared men crowded the doorway; one cradled a flamethrower, its flickering muzzle pointing directly at Luchov. “Don’t!” the Direktor screamed, ramming himself into the corner and covering his face with frail, fluttering hands. “For Christ’s sake, don’t! He’s gone! He’s gone!”
They stood there in the doorway, smokily silhouetted in cordite stench, looking round the stark cubicle. And finally, one of them asked: “Who has gone, Direktor?”
And another said, “Has the Direktor been … dreaming?”
Luchov collapsed on his bed, sobbing. Oh, how he wished he’d only been dreaming. But no, he hadn’t. Not all of it, anyway. For he could still feel the pressure on his wrist where the Necroscope had gripped him, and he could still feel those terrible eyes burning on his face and in his mind.
Oh, yes, Harry Keogh had been here, and pretty soon he’d be back. But the Direktor also knew that unless he was hugely mistaken, Harry had only learned part of what he came to learn. The next time he came, the rest of it would be waiting for him.
But the next time could be any time as of right now!
“Switch it on!” he gasped.
“Eh?” A scientist hastily, unceremoniously pushed by the rest and squeezed himself into the gap beside Luchov’s bed. “The disk? Did you say we’re to switch it on?”
“Yes.” Luchov grasped his arm. “And do it now, Dmitri. Do it right now!” Then Luchov lay back gasping and clutched at his throat. “I can’t breathe. I can’t … breathe.”
“Out!” Dmitri Kolchov ordered at once, with a wave of his arm. “Out, all of you. Let’s have some air in here.”
But as the men filed out: “Wait!” Luchov held out a claw-like hand after them. “You, with the flamethrower. Wait right outside. And you, with the shotgun. Is it loaded? Silver shot?”
“Of course, Direktor.” The man looked puzzled. What use to have it if it wasn’t loaded?”
“And is there a grenadier with you, with grenades?” Luchov was quieter now, steadier.
“Yes, Direktor,” came the answer from outside.
Luchov nodded and his Adam’s apple wobbled a little as he gulped down air. “Then you three—all of you—wait for me outside. And from now on don’t let me out of your sight.” He swung his legs wearily to the floor, then noticed Dmitri Kolchov standing there, staring at him.
“Direktor, I—” Kolchov started to speak.
“Now!” Luchov screamed at him. “Man, are you fucking deaf? Didn’t you hear me? I said switch on the disk right now. Then report to the Duty Room and get me Moscow on the
hot line.”
“Moscow?” Pallid now and shrinking a little, Kolchov backed out of the small room.
“Gorbachev,” Luchov rasped. “Gorbachev and none other. For there’s no one else who can order what comes next!”
2
A THING ALONE—STARSIDE—THE DWELLER
The Necroscope knew that there was very little time left and certainly none to waste. The Soviets had worked out some “final solution” to the Perchorsk problem, which meant that he had to be through the Gate before they could put it into effect.
He went to Detroit and just after 6:20 P.M. found a bike garage and showroom on the point of closing. The last, tired employee was locking up; the next to last, a black forecourt attendant, had just this minute put away his broom, washed his hands, and was sauntering away from the garage down the evening street; marvelous chrome-plated machines stood in a glittering chorus line behind the semi-reflective plate glass.
The Necroscope, right? said a deadspeak voice in Harry’s mind, after he’d used a Möbius door to get into the showroom. It surprised him, for the dead weren’t much for talking to him these days. I mean, you’d have to be the boogyman (whoever it was continued), ‘cos I kin hear you thinkin’!
“You have me at a disadvantage,” Harry answered, polite as ever, at the same time examining the chain which passed through the spoked front wheels of the parade of gleaming motorcycles, securing them.
I have your what? Oh, yeah! You don’t know me, right? Well, I was an Angel.
Deadspeak occasionally conveys more than is said. With regard to Angels: Harry would no longer be surprised to learn that there really were such creatures, and especially in the Möbius Continuum. But on this occasion he saw that the Angel in question wore no such halo. “A Hell’s Angel?” Harry stood on the chain and hauled with both arms, exerting furious Wamphyri strength until a link came apart with a sound like a pistol shot. “But didn’t you have a name?”
